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Monday, November 28, 2016

Misnomers are the reason we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. While native speakers know what they mean, misnomers can be pretty misleading for non-native speakers. So how did we end up with misnomers if we know they're wrong?

Time makes fools of us all.

Over time, misnomers will be created thanks to words changing meaning or keeping an old name that should no longer apply. Language can be pretty stubborn at times and people even more so!

Take tin foil for example. It used to be made out of tin but they've been making it out of aluminium since the second world war. Similarly, a tin can does use tin but calling it a tin-plated steel can would be more accurate.

If you chew your pencil, you needn't worry about lead poisoning. The inside of a pencil obviously isn't made of lead the metal. It's made from graphite, which we used to think was lead ore, and the name stuck.

Be kind, rewind!

Modern technology is creating plenty of misnomers. You still dial phone numbers even though most phones don't even have a dial on them. While you can't physically pick up or hang up modern phones, we still say we do it anyway!

We can still rewind DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, and songs despite not having any reels or tape to wind!

A part is greater than the sum of its whole.

Misnomers also arise due to something called pars pro toto (a part for the whole. This is when a smaller or constituent part of something is used to name the whole thing. This happens a lot with the names of places.

The best example is probably Holland. The term is used to describe The Netherlands when it is actually just a region within the country.

The same happens with England or Great Britain being used to talk about the United Kingdom, which is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, if you were wondering.

Speaking of England, if you've ever visited Big Ben in London, you probably visited the Elizabeth Tower. Big Ben refers to the bell within the tower and isn't even the bell's official name! It's called The Great Bell.

Good enough for me!

Some misnomers seem downright mad. Put a guinea pig next to a pig and it won't take a genius to tell that they aren't pigs. It's pretty clear that starfish and jellyfish aren't fish. At least they do look like stars and jelly, though.

Neither peanuts nor coconuts are nuts. They're legumes and fruits! Are you going to stop eating them because of that? I doubt it!

Monday, November 21, 2016

The English language has been on one hell of a journey. It's a Germanic language, but it's got plenty of loanwords from other languages. Over half of the vocabulary comes from French, Latin, and Greek. But what if it didn't? What if the only words we used came from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon roots?

This is how we get Anglish, English but without any "foreign" words. Sometimes it's also called Root English, as it's English going back to its roots. The thing is, Anglish can't be elegent, it can only be swanky. So how did we get here?

Some Greek and Latin words entered Old English thanks to Christianity and the Norman invasion in the 11th Century meant the upper echelons of society spoke French, giving words with French roots more prestige than their Anglo-Saxon equivalents.

This didn't become an issue until the 16th and 17th centuries when Middle English was becoming Modern English. Some writers at the time borrowed words with Latin roots, since Latin was used in academia, in order to sound fancy. Other writers hated the pointlessness of using words that already had perfectly adequate English equivalents with Anglo-Saxon roots.

Of course, some of the words borrowed into English around this time are still commonly used, like dismiss, celebrate, encyclopedia, commit, capacity and ingenious. Others disappeared from use as quickly as they were introduced, such as expede.

A fine specimen for birdlorists.

In the 19th Century, the writer William Barnes went so far as to create his own Anglo-Saxon words as counterparts to the commonly used Latin ones. Barnes preferred using the word birdlore to ornithology and was much more bendsome (flexible) in his use of a pure English language. Overkill, perhaps?

George Orwell wasn't a fan of writers using Latin words either. In fact, he went so far to say that "Bad writers [...] are haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones".

Personally, I don't think we need to avoid all Latin and Greek words, the English language has some beautiful words thanks to these languages (and their derivatives). However, I don't automatically think you're fancy because you use Latin words, there's nothing wrong with Anglo-Saxon and Germanic words, either!

What do you think? Shall we keep English "pure" or do you like our elegant Latin and Greek words? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Monday, November 14, 2016

On 16th November 1974, a radio message was sent with the objective of being received by aliens. Of course, it would be fairly foolish to send the message in any of our terrestrial languages. So what is the best way to communicate with aliens?

Making it Decipherable

When we transmit communications terrestrially, the transmitters and receivers know how to decode the information. When sending a message to either many or zero alien civilisations, you can't assume they'd use any of the established systems we have here on earth.

Instead, the Arecibo Message alternated its frequency and communicated in binary, a series of either "on" or "off" signals. The message consisted of 1,679 binary signals.

If, like me, you're not a mathematician, that number probably means nothing to you. However, 1,679 is known as a semiprime, meaning that it is the product two prime numbers (numbers only divisible by themselves and one).

The number 1,679 can only be divided by 73 or 23 to give an answer that is a whole number (giving the other number as the result). This means the 1,679 signals can only be arranged rectangular image measuring 23x73 or 73x23.

If you arrange the message as 23x73, it doesn't look like anything and is nonsensical. However, if you arrange it 73x23, the message will display a simple message that aims to tell aliens who we are and what we're all about in the simplest way possible.

Keeping it Short and Simple

The Arecibo Radio Telescope

Since the transmission lasted less than three minutes, there wasn't really much time to tell the whole story of the human race. Instead, the information to transmit was carefully selected in order to "hi" in the most effective way possible:

The decimal system (the numbers from one to ten) was included.

Then the atomic number of the elements that make up our DNA, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous.

Nucleotides, the molecules that make up our DNA, were then included. With this information,

They then gave them our double-helix structure. At this rate, the aliens basically have a snapshot of our genetic makeup. I guess if they were advanced enough, they could build their own versions of us, if they cared enough.

In case there were any doubts, an image of a stick figure was also included in order to show the aliens where our limbs and head go.

M13, the message's destination.

Since they knew who we were, and supposedly the general area of where the message was coming from, a small map of our solar system was also included which pointed out that we reside on the third planet from the sun.

Finally, a representation of the Arecibo radio telescope was included which signs off the message.

Waiting for an Answer

The Arecibo message will take 25,000 years to reach its destination. If aliens receive and decipher the message, and decide to message back immediately, it'll take another 25,000 years for us to get the answer. I wouldn't wait by the phone and nor will anyone at the Arecibo radio telescope.

In fact, the message was always thought of as a bit of a long shot and only really sent in order to show off what the Arecibo radio telescope was capable of! With that said, I still reckon communicating with alien life is an interesting idea and hope you also did!

Monday, November 7, 2016

With the US election taking place tomorrow, you'll have noticed that it has dominated the headlines, especially last month. However, there were still plenty of interesting news stories on languages and today we're bringing you some of favourites. Let's get to it.

TechCrunch brought us the news that Google has implemented neural machine translation. Read about how this type of machine translation is almost as good as human translation here.

Mashable had an interesting story on My Grandmother's Lingo, an interactive animation to help teach an endangered language. Read about the animation here.

Some news outlets in the UK decided to claim that immigration would be to blame for changes in the English language over the next 50 years. The Conversation debunked these claims and likened them to an outdated way of thinking about languages. Read the full article here.

Quartz had an article on articles and Donald Trump sounding racist (not for the first time). Why did his use of "the" when referring to African Americans make him sound racist? You can find the answer in the article here.

USA Today was looking at the current president, rather than the hopefuls being elected tomorrow. The article had ratings of Obama's abilities in various languages (or lack thereof in French). Read about them here.

Following the presidential debate in which Trump said "bad hombres", Merriam Webster received a huge spike in searches for both hombres and ombre. Read their story on it (and the differences between the two words) here.